 "Photo: Wes Wolfe/The Gamecock")
The Drive By Truckers, like their fans at Wednesday's invitation-only Headliners concert, were fueled by Jack Daniels and ready for a rock show.
At about 11 p.m., the Truckers took the stage like any other show they would play - with amazing energy, as if the band was playing to a sold-out Williams-Brice Stadium. The crowd responded in a similar fashion, greeting the band like the rock stars they've become.
Since the release of "Southern Rock Opera" in 2001 - a two-disc adventure into the civil rights struggle in the band's home state of Alabama and a celebration of Lynyrd Skynyrd (with both discs concentrating on what front-man Patterson Hood would call "the duality of the Southern thing") - DBT has been riding the wave of critical and public acclaim.
Subsequent albums, "Decoration Day" and the latest, "The Dirty South," have been placed on "Best Of" lists from the South to New England to the West Coast and everywhere in between.
Still, the band stayed true to its working-class Alabama roots, visibly enjoying the close interaction with the crowd and making sure they had enough hand towels and whiskey on stage.
The Truckers' set was punctuated by Jason Isbell's brilliant guitar playing, which seemed at times as if it was going to peel the paint off the walls.
Whatever he did before he came onstage, he should keep doing it.
His guitar-play was dead-on to the point of unconsciousness. Then again, maybe he was close to it, saying to the crowd early in the show, "You're probably as drunk as I am. It's really great."
The show was the Truckers' first Columbia show since their co-headlining performance at the St. Patrick's Day Festival in Five Points.
No matter how great the Truckers played, though - and they gave an awesome show - they were upstaged by the band that played just before them, a rag-tag group of musicians called Don Chambers + GOAT.
Just imagine a five-member band in which the lead is a burnt-out Neil Young. His hair was long and unkempt; he had an untucked Western shirt and a well-worn pair of leather shoes.
Two other members struck the eye as odd, with the lead guitarist looking like Zachery Scott and the bassist looking like Lisa Loeb.
That wasn't the end of the oddities, though. Don Chambers, the Neil Young look-alike, sported an electric banjo. Zachery Scott's doppelganger made use of an electric-acoustic guitar and wore a nice suit, as well. Also, one of the two conventional-looking band members set up behind a slide guitar.
Don Chambers + GOAT makes its home in Athens, Ga. - where DBT now calls home - and has garnered rave reviews from the hometown crowds and press.
A recent Athens concert by the band compelled a crowd member there to yell, "You're my new favorite band," according to a Weblog on athensmusic.com.
Though Chambers and GOAT haven't ventured far outside the friendly confines of the Classic City, their inventive Southern rock blend should do well following DBT's lead.
The opening band, The South, fit nicely in the modern Southern-rock niche of the evening, though they gave a performance that left the crowd feeling like it'd just seen a raw but promising garage band.
If rock is to survive beyond nu-metal, its saviors may well be a few bands from the Bible Belt. The Drive By Truckers and Don Chambers + GOAT will hopefully be a part of that vanguard of rock's reinventors, and will find the time to visit Columbia many times in the future.
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